Minimum system requirements for Spinrite

[zasdl]

[Sorry if I am posting this to the wrong thread - I do not see any SpinRite-specific threads, but I do see folks posting about it here]

I just bought SpinRite 6.0 to hopefully recover data from a 1TB SATA HDD. I do not have a machine capable of running it, so I am looking to buy a cheap older desktop PC that has BIOS instead of UEFI, specifically to run SpinRite.

I see that the minimum system requirements in the 5.0 manual set a pretty low bar -- 350K RAM, a diskette drive (uhhh ok), runs DOS. etc so I'm assuming it is not required to have a very powerful machine to run this thing. Good -- that should make things cheaper! I'm looking at Dell minitowers like a "Dell Dimension E310 Desktop Computer PC Pentium 4" with 2GB RAM or an "Optiplex 9020".

That should be plenty good right? Any reason to get something beefier?

Thanks!

 

[DanR]

Sorry if I am posting this to the wrong thread - I do not see any SpinRite specific threads, but I do see folks posting about it here]

There are no SpinRite forums here yet - but there will be. Meanwhile, perhaps the Software forum?

That should be plenty good right? Any reason to get something beefier?

That system is more than adequate. SpinRite's system requirements, be it SR 5.0, SR 6.0, or the work-in-progress 6.1, are very minimal.

One more thing,. If the system's drive controller is AHCI only (newer systems), SR 6.0 will not work. But if there is an ATA/IDE/Legacy option (most all older systems) SR 6.0 will work just fine.

 

[PHolder]

I do not see any SpinRite-specific thread

That would be because, as of right now, the only official support for SpinRite is as described on the web page (from which you purchased it.) Basically there is no online support, there is just user support (in the GRC SpinRite newsgroup), and email support from Greg via the web page. That doesn't mean there is any harm in asking for support here, just know that these forums are not specifically setup for that purpose at this time.

 

[zasdl]

Thanks for the help everyone!